The Third Angel’s Message. Rev. 14.
By Uriah Smith
EXPLANATION OF THE IMAGE.
The image, against the worship of which the third message warns us, is the image of the beast mentioned in the same message. That beast, as was shown last week, is a symbol of the papacy. An image of it must be something resembling it. To understand what would be an image of the papacy, we must first form a definite idea of what constitutes the papacy itself. Papal supremacy dates from the time when the decree of Justinian, constituting the pope the head of the church and the corrector of heretics, was carried into effect in 538. The papacy, then, was a church clothed with civil power, an ecclesiastical body, having authority to punish all dissenters with confiscation, imprisonment, torture, and death. What would be an image of the papacy? Another ecclesiastical establishment clothed with similar power. And we must look for this image in some non-Catholic country. For in any country where the Catholic religion is the prevailing religion, it would be impossible for any other church to be clothed with civil power but the Catholic church itself. But that would be the beast, not an image of the beast. The beast cannot be an image of itself. This image is not made by the papal beast, but by another beast introduced in Rev. 13:11, a beast which had two horns like a lamb. This symbol, as we design to show more fully hereafter, represents the United States of America. A brief enumeration of a few specifications may be given here: 1. This government is another power distinct from the papacy. 2. It has the right location, which must be outside of the territory occupied by the first beast, and the ten horns or kingdoms which arose out of the old Roman Empire. These occupy all Western Europe; and Eastern Europe and Asia where civilization has risen the highest are covered by the preceding symbols of earthly governments, Dan. 7, Babylon, Medo-Persia, and Greece. We must consequently look to this hemisphere; and here we find our own government. 3. It has come up “out of the earth,” out of territory previously unoccupied. 4. It arose in a quiet, peaceful manner, like a plant out of the earth, in contrast with those which have come up by the stirring of the wind upon the sea, that is, through revolution and conquest. 5. It is not a monarchical government, there being no crowns upon the horns. 6. It is a republic, as its acts are done by the consent of the people. Verse 14. 7. It is a non-Catholic country, and out of the material here furnished by the Protestant churches, a proper image of the papacy could be formed. It may be objected that whereas the papal church was comparatively a unit, and hence could act in harmony in all its departments in enforcing its dogmas, the Protestant church is so divided as to be unable to agree in regard to what doctrines shall be made imperative on the people. We answer, There are certain points which they hold in common, and which are sufficient to form a basis of co-operation. Chief among these may be mentioned the doctrine of the conscious state of the dead and the immortality of the soul, which is both the foundation and superstructure of spiritualism, and also the doctrine that the first day of the week is the Christian Sabbath. We call attention, briefly, to the fitness of the material here in readiness for an image to the beast: We are not unmindful of the noble service the Protestant churches have rendered to the world, to humanity, and to religion, by introducing and defending, so far as they have, the great principles of Protestantism. But they have made a fatal mistake in stereotyping their doctrines into creeds, and thus taking the first steps backward toward the spiritual tyranny of Rome. Thus the good promise they gave of a free religion, and an unfettered conscience, is already broken. For, if the right of private judgment is allowed by the Protestant church, why are men condemned and expelled from that church for no other crime than honestly attempting to obey the word of God, in some particulars not in accordance with her creed? This is the beginning of apostasy. Read Chas. Beecher’s work, “The Bible a Sufficient Creed.” “Is not the Protestant church,” he asks, “apostate?” Is not the apostasy which we have reason to fear, “already formed”? But apostasy in principle always leads to corruption in practice. And so Paul, in 2 Tim. 3:1–5, sets forth the condition of the professed church of Christ in the last days. A rank growth of twenty heinous sins, with no redeeming virtues, shows that the fruits of the Spirit will be choked and rooted out by the works of the flesh. We can look nowhere else for this picture of Paul’s to be fulfilled except to the Protestant church; for the class of which he speaks maintain a form of godliness, or the outward services of a true Christian worship. And is not the church of our day beginning to manifest to an alarming degree the very characteristics which the apostle has specified? Sufficient testimony on this point has already been presented. See Nos. 11, 12 and 13 of the present volume of the REVIEW. That the majority of the Christians in our land are still to be found in connection with these churches, is undoubtedly true. But a change in this respect is also approaching. For Paul exhorts all true Christians, in his words to Timothy above referred to, to turn away from those who have a form of godliness, but deny the power thereof; and those who desire to live pure and holy lives, who mourn over the desolations of their Zion, and sigh for the abominations done in the land, will certainly heed this injunction of the apostle. And what will be the state of the religious world when this change shall have taken place? We shall then have an array of proud and popular churches from whose communion all the good have departed, from whom the Holy Spirit is withdrawn, and who are in a state of hopeless departure from God. God is no respecter of persons nor of churches; and if the Protestant132churches apostatize from him, will they not be just as efficient agents of oppression as ever pagans or papists have been? And is it not the testimony of all history that just in proportion as any popular and extensive ecclesiastical organization loses the Spirit and power of God, it clamors for the support of the civil arm? Under these circumstances, let an ecclesiastical organization be formed by these churches (than which nothing would be more natural); and let the government legalize such organization and give it power to enforce upon the people those dogmas upon which they can all agree as a basis of union; and what do we have? Just what the prophecy brings to view: an image of the papal beast, an ecclesiastical organization resembling the ancient papacy perfectly in this respect, that it can use the civil arm to carry out its decrees. And are there any indications of such a movement? The preliminary question, that of the grand union of all the churches, is now profoundly agitating the religious world. In May, 1869, S. M. Manning, D. D., in a sermon in Broadway Tabernacle, New York, spoke of the recent efforts to unite all the churches in the land into co-operation on the common points of their faith, as a “prominent and noteworthy sign of the times.” Dr. Lyman Beecher is quoted as saying:— “There is a state of society to be formed by an extended combination of institutions, religious, civil, and literary, which never exists without the co-operation of an educated ministry.”
Chas. Beecher, in his sermon at the dedication of the second Presbyterian church, Ft. Wayne, Ind., Feb. 22, 1846, said:— “Thus are the ministry of the evangelical Protestant denominations, not only formed all the way up under a tremendous pressure of merely human fear, but they live, and move, and breathe, in a state of things radically corrupt, and appealing every hour to every baser element of their nature to hush up the truth and bow the knee to the power of apostasy. Was not this the way things went with Rome? Are we not living her life over again? And what do we see just ahead? Another general council! A world’s convention! Evangelical Alliance and Universal Creed!”
The Banner of Light, of July 30, 1864, said:— “A system will be unfolded sooner or later that will embrace in its folds church and State; for the object of the two should be one and the same. The time is rapidly approaching when the world will be startled by a voice that shall say to every form of oppression and wrong, ‘Thus far shalt thou go, and no farther.’ Old things are rapidly passing away in the religious and social, as well as in the political, world. Behold all things must be formed anew.”
The Church Advocate, in March, 1870, speaking of the formation of an “Independent American Catholic church,” a movement now agitated in this country, said:— “There is evidently some secret power at work which may be preparing the world for great events in the near future.”
A Mr. Havens, in a speech delivered in New York, a few years ago, said:— “For my own part I wait to see the day when a Luther shall spring up in this country who shall found a great American Catholic church, instead of a great Roman Catholic church; and who shall teach men that they can be good Catholics without professing allegiance to a pontiff on the other side of the Atlantic.”
There is every indication that at no distant day such a church will be seen. The fact that a special message is now waxing loud in the land designed to meet such a contingency, and that we even now see the preliminary steps taken which must result in the formation of that image of which the message forewarns us, is proof that a crisis is upon us for which men would do well to prepare. The third message, mercifully sent out to meet the wants of the present hour, indicates the path of duty, and the only way of escape from impending dangers. U. S.